hms iron duke

Monday, 31 March 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 31
March.“Forget these frivolous demands
which strike a terror to my fainting soul”. So pleads the Devil’s agent Mephostophilis
to Doctor Faustus in Christopher Marlowe’s Goethe-inspired play.Faustus has just agreed twenty-four years of
power and luxury in return for the eternal damnation thereafter of his
soul.The opportunity Moscow seized to
annex Ukraine-Crimea was made possible by three factors; Europe’s energy
dependency, Russian investments in European financial centres most notably
London and European unilateral disarmament.

Today, Russia supplies
EU member-states with 25% of their oil and gas.The Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland import between 70% and
100% of their gas from Russia.Russia
has also created a very strategic cartel called the Gas Exporting Countries
Forum which holds up to 70% of the world’s reserves. Russia is playing hard poker as Europe as ever
plays bad chess.

The other day at a
conference a senior British politician called me “sweet, naïve and
young”.As insults go it was a pretty
mild attack and I have known worse, although I did object to him calling me
“young”.My naivété to his mind was to
rebuke British politicians for their enduring ability to sacrifice the
long-term strategic well-being of Britain for the short-term political fixes
that have and continue to exaggerate and accelerate the UK’s precipitous
decline.In his utter cynicism he
revealed why politics in Europe has become the enemy of strategy.

The defence figures alone
speak for themselves.The US invests roughly $100k per soldier in
2014 compared with an average European investment of $24k with the
interoperability gap between US and European forces growing daily.And, whilst the US can deploy some 12.5% of
its force many Europeans can only deploy on average 3.5% . Moreover,
whilst the US spends only 36% of its defence budget on personnel some Europeans
are spending between 70% and 75%.Russia is investing some $700bn in a new
military by 2020.

Now, I am no nostalgist
about defence.States should only have
the minimum military power commensurate with the achievement of legitimate
foreign and security policy goals.However, not only are Europeans selling themselves body and soul for energy and dodgy money they are fast abandoning
the very means to assure their collective defence. The farcical sanctions the EU imposed on Russian
officials simply reinforced the sense of dangerous impotence which today
characterises Europe in the world and for which Europeans will pay a dear
price.

London is a case in
point and has become dangerously unbalanced in its strategic prescriptions.Although the British are
investing some $250bn in new defence equipment over the next decade if one
listens to British officials it is very hard to understand why.Indeed, they reject the very idea that the
world is returning to Realpolitik even though it is plan to see.At a meeting in London last week the London
Establishment’s obsession with soft power was all too illuminating. British officials were dismissive of
Ukraine-Crimea.They inferred it was a
minor event and that Britain should remain focussed almost exclusively on
counter-terrorism and aid and development.If one fills
a government with counter-terrorism specialists then every problem becomes
counter-terrorism.

All of this makes
President Obama’s speech in Brussels last week sound not a little desperate.
“Going forward, every NATO member state must step up and carry its share of the
burden by showing the political will to invest in our collective defence and by
developing the capabilities to serve as a source of international peace and security”.Not a chance!As he was speaking I was talking to a high-ranking NATO officer who told
me bluntly the Alliance can no longer carry out the very collective defence
President Obama referred to. Another
senior NATO officer mused with me about how far the new Russian Army would make
it across Europe before it was stopped. Capability, will and intent are the stuff of power not wishful thinking. Now, I do not expect Russia to roll across Europe but the Baltic States are rightfully concerned.

To my British
politician friend I say this.If I am ‘naïve’
to demand leaders confront the world as it is not as they would like it to be then
so be it; if I am ‘sweet’ for calling upon leaders to face reality then I am so
condemned; and if I am ‘young’ for requiring principles of power and influence
are adhered to then guilty as charged.

There are two kinds of state in today’s world; those shaping reality and those denying it.Unless Europe’s hopeless leaders begin to take a long view about the emerging big global picture then something very nasty is going to happen to Europeans…again!

In his dying hour Faustus
faces up to the consequence of his hubris as he watches the hand of a clock
move inexorably towards his damnation.“O lente, lente currite noctis ecquis”, he pleads - “Oh slowly, slowly
run the horses of the night”.

Thursday, 27 March 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 27 March. Yesterday my email was hacked by the (or a) Russians. The attack took place as I was briefing NATO commanders at the NATO Rapid Deployment Corps - Italy just outside Milan.

This was not the now usual bit of e-criminality that daily blights our lives. The people who know about these things confirm it was a sophisticated and personalised attack from somewhere/someone in Russia. Clearly something I had written had upset someone. As that someone said to me this morning - this was a shot across the bows - a warning.

And that is the point; implicit in the current crisis over Ukraine-Crimea is not just the use of force to assert territorial claims which is simply plain wrong. There is also the big issue of freedom and respect. If this kind of attack is how a Russian Europe would operate then count me out.

The frustrating thing for me is that I am sensitive to the Russian world view and I really want to understand it. Indeed, I have a huge respect for Russia and have studied its culture and its history. Indeed, unlike most Westerners I think I get Russia and understand the frustrations both the Kremlin and Russians feel about their treatment by the West, particularly over the past twenty years. Last year I had the very real honour of addressing the Moscow European Security Conference and was deeply moved and honoured to visit Victory Park and the War Museum.

However, when Russia makes big mistakes as it has just done by using force to annex Ukraine-Crimea I will call it as I see it and stand firmly with my friends in Eastern Europe who have been left concerned and uneasy by Russia's actions.

The bottom-line is this Moscow; until you engage criticism openly then it will be very hard for those of us willing to engage you constructively but critically to feel a dialogue is worth having. As for my views Moscow you should read what I say about our Dear Leaders in Brussels!

So long as Russia seems determined to replay the nineteenth century rather than the twenty-first we will simply talk past each other and that would be a tragedy not just for Europe but the wider world.

So, for the record, I am not in Kiev, I am not on holiday, I have not been mugged and I have not had anything whatsoever to do with the British Embassy therein. Mind you I was deeply moved by those of you out there offering to help. My apologies for any inconvenience.

Monday, 24 March 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 24
March.The Netherlands is shut today for
a bit of nuclear grandstanding. The reason
for all the chaos is Nuclear Security Summit 2014 which is taking place today in
The Hague (as well as a bit of Russia-less G7).In 1917 US President Woodrow Wilson said that the world must be made
safe for democracy.Implicit in this
summit is the need to make the world safe for power.

On the face of it the
Summit is one of those strategic photo-ops/jamborees/champagne bun-fights for
politicians that promise so much and deliver so little.However, this one takes place just when the
balance between might and right, power and law upon which nuclear restraint
rests is again being tested.

To underline the
challenge Russia’s President Putin pulled out of the Summit in the wake of his
invasion of Ukraine-Crimea demonstrating the extent to which the world now
hovers between might and right.It could
go either way.

The ‘Nuclear Top’, as
the Dutch rather disarmingly call the Summit, focuses on the very real danger
of nuclear terrorism.It should have
focused on President Obama’s 2009 vision of a “Global Zero”, a world free of
nuclear weapons.However, that has about
as much chance of happening as I have of being NATO’s next Secretary-General (I
am still available and at very reasonable rates).

The Summit will address
the danger that nuclear material might fall into the wrong hands, which of
course implied it was always in the ‘right’ hands.The specific concern is that terrorists could
gain access to sufficient radiological material to make a “dirty bomb”.

Sister Summits in Washington
and Seoul produced a Framework to combat nuclear terrorism that is being
discussed as I write.The Framework has
three elements: reduce the amount of dangerous nuclear material in the world;
improve the security of existing material; and increase international
co-operation.

Such grandiose great
power démarches have a chequered
history, particularly when the great powers are at geopolitical odds.Be it efforts to ban chemical weapons a
century ago to the many and varied attempts at conventional and nuclear arms
control and disarmament efforts to constrain and restrain massive destruction within
laws and regimes has been constant and not always successful.Indeed, The European Union was born out of
just such an effort; to constrain state action by legal precept thus rendering
the ability of Europeans to wage war on each other impossible.

Putin’s invasion of
Ukraine-Crimea confirms all too eloquently that the twenty-first century could
well be little different than the twentieth.Good old-fashioned Realpolitik is back with a bang and along with it hierarchies
of prestige, spheres of influence and balances of bunker-busting power in which
how big is one’s arsenal again matters.

The paradox of this Summit
is that it also implies one of the struggles that could well come to define the
twenty-first century – the state versus the anti-state.The presence of China’s President Xi attests
to the concern of leaders that mass destructive nuclear power could fall into
the hands of terrorists. After all, nuclear technology is now some eighty years
old and in the anarchic world of globalisation terrorists could conceivably get
their hands on anything with the right contacts, money and time.

And it is the latter
threat that so exercises Presidents Obama and Xi, and in the absence of Putin
that other titan of geopolitics, President Herman Van Rompuy of Europe (excuse
the giggles).Moreover, it is not just
the idea that nuclear-armed terrorists could inflict real damage on societies,
but that such groups could also be instrumentalised as proxies by third states and
in so doing neutralise great power.

Hard truths
abound.First, hyper-immigration has
also made open societies ever more vulnerable to the hatreds that drive catastrophic
terrorists with nuclear ambitions.Second, the weakening of many states in the face of anti-state actors
such as Al Qaeda has promoted the ‘anarchisation/democratisation’ of mass
destruction as ever smaller groups now seriously seek to gain access to
radiological and nuclear capabilities.Third, leaders of the Western powers in particular feel ever more
uncomfortable using force for fear of the retribution it could trigger from
enemies within.

In other words, states
and groups that are on the face of it far weaker than some of those represented
around the table in The Hague could negate the very influence upon which great
power is established if they can successfully obtain such technologies.

Paradoxically, the
vulnerable states include Russia if only Moscow could see it.Russia may be an autocracy and be far less
open than the rest of Europe.However, in
the wake of the disastrous war Russia fought in the 1990s to prevent Chechen
independence Moscow now faces the worst of all worlds – Islamists threats along
its southern border in the very lawless places where leaking nuclear technology,
catastrophic terrorism and criminality co-exist.

In other words, this
summit matters.However, because once
again might and right are again at odds terrorists will seek to exploit the
seams between them. As Machiavelli once
said, “A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise”.

Thursday, 20 March 2014

Somewhere in Deepest
England. 20 March.Russia has used force
in twenty-first century Europe to militarily occupy a significant and strategic
portion of a neighbouring sovereign state...and it is about to get away with it.
It does not matter that a majority of Crimeans may have wanted to rejoin Russia. In taking Crimea Russia has made a mockery of several treaties, badly undermined Europe’s security architecture and reopened questions about the relationship between might and right in Europe that were thought to be the stuff of history. What must be done?

I have just
been attending a high-level meeting to consider NATO's strategic narrative and the agenda for the 2014 NATO
Summit in Wales.My colleagues and I
talked against the background of a faint but constant drum-beat as Russia
consolidated its Crimean land grab.One
must be conceptually clear at such moments; there are few if any short-term
actions NATO and its members can take to get Crimea back to Ukraine, but there
should be both a decisive response and medium-to-long term consequences for Russia.

First, the West must
escalate not de-escalate.Therefore, the
desire to rationalise away what President Putin has done must be pushed away.This is a strategic power struggle between
Russia and the West about influence along the entirety of Moscow’s western and
southern borders.As such Russia’s
action has potentially the most profound of consequences for Europe and
beyond.

Second, the invasion of
Crimea should not be seen as an event but rather part of Russian strategy.At the meeting one of my colleagues said that Russia will pay a high financial price to maintain Crimea.Moscow could not give a jot.Russia’s invasion is about history and
strategy.As such Putin’s masterstroke
has been to destabilise every former Soviet republic with one act.He has also reinvigorated Russia’s sphere of
influence and greatly damaged the strategic credibility of the West of which
NATO is a central pillar.He has also
ended any pretence to further EU and NATO enlargement and with it the idea of a
Europe whole and free.

Third, President Putin has
also come out of the power closet with a bang and in so doing redefined the
meaning of ‘legitimacy’ in Russia.Any
hope that Russia would at some point morph into a liberal European style
parliamentary democracy is now gone.Russia is now a fully-blown aggressive revisionist power on Europe’s
border with a classically Russian strong man at the helm who is wrapping
himself in the Russian flag to justify power and position.That might not work for more urbane Muscovites
but it goes down a hoot in much of rural Russia.

This precisely the kind
of moment NATO is for.So, what can be
done?

NATO leaders must move quickly to place
military forces in the Baltic States. This will reassure them and assure their
security under Article 5 of the Treaty of Washington.

A Western military tripwire must be
established along NATO’s border with Russia to complicate Moscow’s regional-strategic
calculation.

The US must quickly bring back two
additional Brigade Combat Teams to Europe to reinforce the existing force.

Exercises must begin for the rapid
reinforcement of NATO forces in Eastern Europe in the event of a crisis as part
of a new Forward Deployment strategy.

NATO must end its reluctance to base
Allied forces in Eastern Europe out of fear it might be seen by Moscow as
provocative.Russia is the provocateur.

The NATO-Russia Council must be
suspended;

The modernisation of Article 5
collective defence must now be urgently reconsidered to include cyber and
missile defence.

The invasion also
completely resets the challenge NATO will face at the Wales summit in September
which must now send a stiff message.High-level
political guidance must be given to the NATO Secretary-General to undertake a
broad sweep of the new strategic landscape, Russia’s place in it and thereafter
begin the necessary planning.

Specifically, the
Alliance must be tasked with considering all the necessary means to counter
Russian intimidation and possible aggression and include within that wider
consideration of Russia’s influence, not least in the Mediterranean and the
Middle East.Sadly, Russia will end the
weak co-operation of late over Syria and Iran but that was probably intended by
Moscow in any case.Critically, the
summit should re-establish the symbolic commitment of all NATO nations to spend
at least 2% of GDP on defence.

What will happen?Sadly, NATO is split right down the middle
between Central and Eastern European members rightly alarmed by the invasion
and Western Europeans fast rationalising Russia’s action away.It is that which Putin has understood and it
is precisely the seams and grey areas of Alliance resolve that he has
brilliantly exploited with speed and to effect.

Crimea is gone and the
fate of Eastern Ukraine probably lies in the resolve and will of Western
capitals.Thus far there has been no
will and little resolve, particularly in Western Europe.Indeed, Ukraine could face a dark fate if
Europeans in particular continue to show the almost derisory and utterly
spineless response they have shown thus far.

If all of the above
sounds assertive and uncomfortable…it is.This is not yet a new Cold War but it is certainly the start of a Cold
Peace.It is time for the West to stand
up and stand together. Failure to act and NATO's strategic narrative may well have been written by Hans Christian Andersen.

Saturday, 15 March 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 15 March. One of those peculiarly British spats boiled up this morning. The Education Secretary (Minister) criticised his boss David Cameron for the "preposterous" number of old boys from Britain's poshest school Eton that he has silk hankerchiefed into his inner circle. Five out of the six people charged with writing the Conservative Party manifesto for the 2015 General Elections are 'OEs', one of whom recently told a friend of mine of his contempt for the electorate. This is not only bad politics on Cameron's part, it demonstrates the degree to which the Prime Minister and his clique are out of touch with the reality of the very people he needs to keep him in power.

OEs will no doubt respond that Gove's jibe and my concerns are the politics of envy. And it is certainly the case that some of my best friends and their children either went to or are currently at Eton. However, those that would accuse me of inverted snobbery should pause a moment. For my sins I was one of the first if not THE first Comprehensive School pupil/'oick' to go up to Oxford in 1976.

Gove also had a swipe at 'Oxbridge' in his remarks. When I arrived at University College, Oxford ('Univ') in September 1976 I suffered an enormous culture shock. Indeed, had I not been an athlete I probably would have jacked the whole thing in during my first year because of the appalling upper class, public (private) school snobbery I suffered from some (by no means all). Thanks to a few good people some of whom were indeed public school boys and the US, Canadian and Australian Rhode Scholars I persevered.

However, if I look at Univ today the efforts the college has made to reflect a changing society are legion. Yes, more can always be done but I am intensely proud of Univ for such efforts to cope with 'oicks' like me. Indeed, when I go to Univ today it is much nicer place and for me a better college for it than back in 1976.

It is therefore a profound shame Cameron has surrounded himself almost exclusively with old 'chums' and chums of chums. It gives the impression of a throwback prime minister, a man who is only comfortable amongst his 'own'. Sometimes Cameron's inner-circle exudes the impression of a cast of characters that have escaped from a Tom Sharpe novel suffering from various degrees of noblesse oblige. Or perhaps I mean School for Scoundrels?

Now, I am as critical of the tyranny of diversity as I am of self-perpetuating class-based elites. One only has to look at the way in which 'diversity' has become a metaphor for the Left's growing control over England's judiciary and the promotion in some sectors of mediocrity for the sake of it. Any artificial filters on progression and promotion must be removed.

However, Cameron's anti-diversity is equally inexcusable. By surrounding himself with Old Etonians and perhaps the odd Old St Paulian (I do not know the collective noun for those blessed with an education at St Paul's School) David Cameron confirms the suspicion of many that he is a self-promoting upper-class 'hooray henry' who had a helping hand into the upper echelons of politics and is now doing similar favours for his chums. It is as though Britain is being cast back into the politics of class which profoundly undermines the idea that Britain's best and brightest can make it to the top if good enough.

My own absolute belief is that for Britain to compete and survive in the twenty-first century the Whitehall Establishment will need to be truly open to the best irrespective of class, race, gender or orientation. Too often whenever I attend meetings in Whitehall class is all too apparent. The bosses speak with cut-glass, upper class, Eton (or some other posh school) educated accents. The 'gofers' tend to be from the bourgeoisie or perhaps the lower middle classes. The lower levels? Draw your own conclusions.

The strangest thing of all is that the Whitehall elite are forever talking about 'access' whilst quietly ensuring it is only their own they allow past the pearly gates of power.

Cameron's cliqueism sends all the wrong signals. Cameron's clique is totally incapable of picking up the real signals modern Britain sends.

Thursday, 13 March 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 13
March. Four events this past month have
highlighted the rapidly shifting balance of military power in the world. Yesterday General Sir Peter Wall, Head of the British
Army, warned that “moral disarmament” would be exploited by Britain’s enemies and
that he could not rule out future “force-on-force” conflicts. In fact, Britain is morally and actually disarming along with much of
Europe.According
to US think-tank CSIS cuts to European defence budgets between 2001 and 2013
represented a per annum compound reduction of 1.8% per annum or about 20% over
the period.

Last
month American Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced further
cuts to the US armed forces. Hagel said
it was “time to face reality”, as he followed Britain in announcing a 15%
reduction in the size of the US Army, as well as other cuts.

Russia’s
February 2014 invasion of Ukraine-Crimea should have reminded
Europeans of the inextricable link between military power and political ambition, particularly for the non-democracies. Indeed, what was thought unthinkable in Europe even a
month ago is very clearly thinkable in the Kremlin.

In the immediate aftermath
of Russia’s bungled 2008 invasion of Georgia the Kremlin ordered a major review
of the Russian Armed Forces. It was not a pretty picture.On 31st December 2010 Moscow launched
a massive military equipment programme for the ten year period 2011-2020 that
was to cost some $775bn.The investment
envisioned annual average growth in the Russian economy of around 6.5%.In the event Russia is likely to grow more
modestly over the period at between 4-5% per annum. Such growth will still result in some $700bn of
military investments by 2020 or an increase in defence expenditure from the
current $90.7bn per annum to around $122bn.

Affordability is a (not
THE) key criteria for military expenditure.Contrast the Russian figures with France.In 2012 the CIA estimated the relative
purchasing power of the Russian economy to be some $2.6tr whilst France was
valued at $2.3tr.If Moscow is right and
the economy does indeed grow at 4-5% per annum up to 2020 the Russian economy would then be worth some $3.5tr.Given the
Eurozone crisis the best that can be hoped for France (and many European
economies) is 1-2% growth per annum (if lucky). Even at 2% growth per annum the
French economy will only be worth some $2.5bn by 2020.

Last week Beijing announced that the 2014 Chinese defence budget will
increase by 12.7% to $132bn per annum.Beijing has been growing the defence budget by at least 11% per annum
since 1989.If China continues to grow the
military by about 12% per annum, which is implied in the China’s 2013 Defence
White Paper then by 2020 China will be spending $230bn on defence.

Whilst such expenditure
will not match the planned US c$560bn of expenditures in 2020 taken together the
combined Chinese and Russian expenditures on their respective armed forces will
total some $350bn. Many of those forces will be modern.And, whilst the Pentagon’s January 2012 “Defense
Budget Priorities and Choices” paper points the way to a future US force that
will be cutting edge most European armed forces will remain at best only partially
modernised.This will mean that each euro/pound
spent will in effect generate far less capability than Europe’s American,
Chinese and Russian counterparts. Given that Britain and
France represent some 50% of all European defence expenditure and much of the c200bn spent each year by Europeans on defence is wasted the
Euro-strategic balance is shifting markedly and rapidly.

The world strategic balance is also shifting.Read between the lines of both Chinese and Russian military strategies
and their aim is clear; to complicate America’s strategic calculation by
forcing the US to stretch its armed forces the world over.With most Europeans wilfully refusing to help
resolve Washington’s deepening and acute strategic dilemma $560bn will by 2020 be worth far
less dollar for dollar and Chinese and Russian investments worth more.

Sadly, autocratic regimes are
being emboldened the world over by the West’s moral and actual disarmament in
what is fast becoming a new Tepid War.The
signals being sent of US retrenchment and European disarmament have clearly encouraged
Moscow, Beijing and others to up the military ante.Only the most strategically-illiterate of
political leaders could now discount the established link between military
power and policy goals.And yet in Europe illiteracy rules the day; hard power thinking offends the high priests of soft power.

Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine-Crimea and China’s serial hiking of defence spending really should mark
the end of the fantasy that the ideal of a new liberal world order is shared by all. It is power that is shaping the twenty-first century not values. And, if values are to mean anything they must be backed by power.

Wednesday, 12 March 2014

At the core of Britain’s defence
strategy must be a force able to lead coalitions via a combined and joint force
concept that is so closely co-ordinated that, in effect, it represents a true
revolution in military affairs – organic jointness.In a 2013 speech to the Royal United Services Institute, the British Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Houghton stated, “As far
as the force structure is concerned, we must exploit the advent of the Joint
Forces Command to champion the enablement of the force.This command is now the proponent for C4ISR,
for Cyber, for Special Forces, for Joint Logistics and Defence Medical
Services.It owns those things that
represent the nervous system of capability. And it has come of age”. In fact, the new Joint Force Command (JFC)
must become far more than a mere proponent – it must drive change.

Therefore, it is time for
Britain to be defence radical.It was
Britain that created the first all-professional force back in 1960.Britain must now create the first truly
strategic and truly joint force.The new
Joint Force Command is a start, but it goes nowhere near far enough and, at the
very least, must have high-level representation from all three services, if the
new Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) is to be realised as a strategic rather
than an economy force.To that end, a
showcase is needed that demonstrates the capacity of British forces to reach
and strike and afford Britain effective command and control of coalitions.In that context, jointness means synthesis
thorough combined and integrated forces, including appropriate civilian
elements.

However, it is precisely in the domain of joint and integrated
capability that organic jointness is vitally needed.For too long Service chiefs have seen such
capability as secondary to their own core Service capabilities.That must end.Joint and integrated capabilities are the
bedrock upon which the Joint Force must be established, and central to the
working up of organic jointness.This is
vital for effective command and control and strategic situational awareness.
The Joint Force Command must therefore be given the status and authority to
drive organic jointness across the three Services.It should also be given a further role (with
supporting capabilities and resources) to reach out to all civilian national
means.

To achieve such a radical shift Britain's 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR 2015) would need to mark a clean break
from SDSR 2010.SDSR 2010 was a spread-sheet review, where balancing the books came
well before establishing a coherent strategic military capability.To be fair, this is not surprising given the
current government was faced in 2010 with unfunded spending commitments of
£74bn when it came to power.Defence
Secretary Philip Hammond, faced with such a liability, was right to suggest
that one of his main tasks was to end what he called a “conspiracy of optimism”
at the Ministry of Defence and defence equipment.However, balancing strategy with commitments
has proven harder than expected.

Indeed, whilst those who drafted SDSR 2010 understood this requirement
and accepted capability “holidays”, there was apparently very little linkage
between the SDSR’s cost-cutting mission and the ‘strategy’ trumpeted by
government and the defence review singularly failed to properly align
resources and commitments.Consequently, Future Force 2020 (FF2020) is a
messy compromise driven more by budget considerations than strategic
calculation.The current buzzwords of
MoD-speak – agile, flexible and adaptable – must thus be seen as metaphors for
cuts rather than some new concept of jointness or interoperability and, at the
very least, SDSR 2015 must move to resolve that tension.

The
sheer scale and pace of cuts also had a disastrous effect on British
influence.SDSR 2010 nominally cut the
defence budget by 8% but, in reality, went far further, whilst the Government’s
June 2013 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) ‘shaved’ a further 7% off what
was meant to have been the absolute defence bottom-line.This sent a very negative set of signals to
allies, partners and the armed forces themselves.It almost certainly encouraged those who would
welcome diminished British and, by extension, Western influence in the
world.

Hopefully,
with the CSR the British defence budget appears to have at last been
stabilised, although the Chancellor is calling for a further 20% off public
expenditure post 2015.Moreover, defence
cost inflation is running markedly higher than the allowances incorporated into
planning the defence budget, which is still declining in real terms.The Special Military Reserve will be cut by
£900m but this is in line with reducing operational costs as British forces
begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan.The CSR retained the defence resource budget at £24bn ($37bn) and the
defence equipment budget was fixed at £14bn ($21bn), with a year-on-year
real-terms increase of 1% up to 2020.

However, whilst there will be no cuts to the numbers of soldiers,
sailors and airmen, major cuts were earmarked for defence civilians which will
mean either the engagement of expensive contractors, the diversion of military
personnel to undertake jobs hitherto done by civilians or simply a reduction of
capacity to undertake work.

Monday, 10 March 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 10
March. Thomas Hobbes once wrote that “covenants
without the sword are but words and of no strength to protect a man at all”.One hundred years ago in Britain Asquith’s
Liberal Government was about to face the most terrifying decision of all –
whether or not to go to war with Germany.The Cabinet was deeply split.Foreign
Secretary Sir Edward Grey believed that Britain had no alternative but to
honour treaty obligations to protect Belgian neutrality from German aggression and
a secret 1912 commitment made to protect French ports in the Channel and the Atlantic.Others in the Cabinet tended towards the view
that ancient and/or secret obligations were but words and should not commit
Britain to war.Thankfully, whilst war
is not imminent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine-Crimea has once again demonstrated
Hobbes’s truism; if treaties are not reinforced by all means of influence then
might prevails.

In 1994 America,
Britain, Russia and Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum.In return for the abandonment of Soviet-era nuclear
stockpiles that for a time made Kiev the world’s third nuclear power Ukrainian
sovereignty was to be protected.Ukraine, of which Crimea was clearly a sovereign part, duly fulfilled
its obligations.France and China later
gave similar assurances.Sadly, Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine-Crimea has demonstrated that such assurances are as empty
as the old Soviet nuclear silos that still pockmark the Ukrainian landscape.

The Kremlin has also
revealed something else; Europe’s much-lauded soft power is simply a metaphor
for empty power.Indeed, if Hobbes were
alive today he would write that civil power is of no strength at all.EU leaders can make all the phone calls they
like to to a dissembling President Putin but the Kremlin knows such bluster is
but words.Worse, by allowing a Moscow
that sees the world purely in term of power to ensnare Europe in energy
dependency there is nothing that can be done to stop Russia from annexing
Ukraine-Crimea.

What will it take for
Europeans to wake up and realise that investment in armed forces is not blind
militarism but rather part of the essential strategic balance?Indeed, such investment is vital to
demonstrate to the Kremlin and others a clear determination that all covenants
will be honoured. And yet it is precisely
the abandonment of the hard strategy that underpins such covenants that made
the invasion of Ukraine-Crimea possible.

This is typified nowhere
more pointedly than in London where hard strategy has been replaced by hard
accountancy.Phillip Hammond, Britain’s
Secretary-of-State for Defence last week made one of the most dangerous assertions
I have heard in recent years to justify the abandonment of strategy.Hammond warned of the danger of setting
strategy without knowing first how much money could be spent.It is precisely the abandonment of long-term
strategy for the sake of short-term politics that I write about in my new book Little Britain? Twenty-First Century Strategy
for a Middling European Power (www.amazon.com).

The first duty of any government
is the security and defence of its citizens.What Hammond is really saying that Britain’s government will only
consider security and defence investment after it has paid for welfare, health
and everything else that might just keep has government in power. Only then will
the British Government consider how much threat they can afford.This is precisely how accountants corrupt
strategy.And, given than NATO and the
EU are central to British security strategy Britain’s non-strategy damages both
and has undoubtedly encouraged the Kremlin’s taste for military adventurism.

This is also tragic for
Russia.Last year I had the very
distinct honour of addressing Russian leaders at the Moscow European Security Conference.
I am no Russophobe.In typical fashion I
was blunt. “Get over the Cold War”, I
said.“The only stable border you have
is with us in the West”.They did not
listen.Shortly thereafter I made a
speech in Riga, Latvia entitled NATO’s
Riga Test.In that speech I said
that the true test of NATO’s worth was whether the good people of Riga and
across the region could sleep soundly in their beds secure in their own
security.

Russia is not about to
invade Latvia.However, if Europeans continue
to arm covenants with words only then an unstable Kremlin might, just might, be
tempted at some point to exploit “Sudeten Russians” to boost its nationalist
credentials. The use of the
ethnic-Russian card to justify invasion is no different from Hitler’s demand
that Sudeten Germans be united with the Reich in 1938.

In the wake of Russia’s
invasion real leaders would urgently undertake a scan of the strategic horizon and
re-consider their respective defence postures.Such a scan would demonstrate to all but the strategically-myopic the
dangers that are growing in the international system and the extent to which
such dangers are exaggerated by Europe’s self-generated inability to uphold the
very international law it claims to champion.And yet nothing…

Peace in our time?Make no mistake; Ukraine-Crimea could be Munich
revisited if Russia is simply given a slap by the strategically
limped-wristed.It will be seen as
simply another “quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know
nothing” that gets in the way of short-term strategic convenience.If that is indeed the case then all the
solemn treaties Europeans have signed since the end of the Cold War will be
seen by the likes of Beijing, Moscow and others to be covenants without the
sword.

At the very least NATO
nations must commit to the agreed 2% GDP expenditure on defence.That alone will send the necessary signal
that covenants such as Budapest and indeed international law in general really
do matter.

Friday, 7 March 2014

Izmir, Turkey. 7
March.2014 is a strategic tipping point
for NATO.The December end of major
combat operations in Afghanistan is being foreshadowed by the Russian invasion
of Ukraine-Crimea.Ideally, at this
pivotal moment NATO’s September 2014 Wales summit should consider the strategic
and operational future of the Alliance into the 2020s.To that end, I am attending high-level
conferences in Washington, Britain and Paris to consider those issues and will
act as rapporteur for one of those meetings.
It is against that backdrop I have just attended and addressed the Corps
Commanders’ Meeting at Allied Land Command in Izmir, Turkey in support of Lt.
General Hodges and his team.Are NATO corps
ready for the coming challenges?

The basics; NATO has
nine so-called Graduated Readiness Force (Land) (GRF-L) corps.Along with maritime and air forces they are
the beating operational heart of the fighting Alliance – NATO’s hard corps.As such these forces are and will be the
litmus test as to whether the world’s most successful politico-military
alliance is fit for twenty-first century purpose.

They will need to be
fit as the balance of military power is fast shifting east.This week it was announced that China would
increase its defence budget this year by a further 12.2% to $131.57bn, which is
probably some 15-20% below the actual figure.The ‘fruits’ of Russia’s massive military modernisation programme can be
seen in Ukraine-Crimea in the body armour and equipment being displayed by the
Special and Specialised Forces under General Anatoly Sidorov’s command.

In other words, once
the Afghan dust has cleared NATO leaders will finally have to face a painful
fact; this is the beginning of a new and dangerous strategic age.No longer can the certification and
effectiveness of Alliance forces be measured purely in terms of
counter-terrorism or security force assistance.

The key test will be
the ability of NATO forces to deter, mitigate and if needs be fight at the high-end
of conflict.President Putin invaded
Ukraine-Crimea because he could.In all
likelihood China will re-take Taiwan at some point by force if it can.Soft power and economic sanctions whilst
important will not in and of themselves deter such military adventurism.Indeed, the only way for such military
adventurism to be deterred will be for the Alliance to re-invent itself as a
high-end force that is also effective across a broad conflict spectrum – both fighting
force and partnership force.

And reinvent itself the
Alliance must.First, this is one of
those moments when NATO is looking at what is as close to a strategic blank
sheet as it is possible to get.The end
of major combat operations in Afghanistan will also mark the effective end of
NATO’s almost exclusive focus on stabilisation and reconstruction since
1991.If the West together is to provide
STRATEGIC stabilisation then the Alliance will once again have to become a hard
alliance.

Second, for that to
happen and given the economic backdrop in Europe the way NATO forces are
generated and organised will need to be radically re-thought.The Alliance will need to be at the very
forefront of a new way of armies, air forces and navies working together across
five strategic domains – air, sea, land, cyber and space.Connectivity and interoperability (both actual and intellectual) will be the critical component
of forces that will not so much operate together but operate as one.

So, what is my
assessment of NATO’s corps?There
were two NATOs on show in Izmir - hard corps and soft corps NATO.Some
NATO nations get this and understand the need to re-generate Alliance
deterrent credibility via a high-end force built on deployable strategic headquarters of which the corps
are a key part.Other NATO nations reject this and
continue to emphasise low-level peace support operations and security force
assistance – a kind of strategic Telly Tubbies land.The trouble is that too many of Europe’s political
leaders are also attracted to this fool’s paradise and all too keen to make the false economy of endless defence cuts.It is a kind of
strategic appeasement.

Therefore, NATO leaders must consider two options
urgently.The
preferred option would be a reformed force re-established on corps that are themselves firmly established
on a high-end warfighting capability.To
that end a reform, experimentation, exercising and education development
programme should ideally be put in place now to harmonise force concepts,
structures, capabilities and doctrines.Another option is in effect what exists today – corps that are similar in name only, operating at very different levels of ambition and capability.At present several NATO nations seem profoundly opposed to the idea of high-end reform.

The high-end option
would be defined purely in terms of twenty-first century military strategy with
the focus on achieving a new balance between efficiency and effectiveness.This would see the number of corps reduced
from the current nine to six with all corps able to provide deployed theatre
command and thus rotate seamlessly through crises and conflicts.

if not hard corps NATO will be
comprised of those Allied forces able and capable of taking on high-end
military tasks.Soft corps NATO will be
those forces only able to undertake the less challenging military tasks.Frankly, if that is to be NATO’s reality then
the Alliance should be structured thus and the dangerous pretence ended hat unity of
purpose and effort is anything but a fantasy.

However, there is
another challenge that NATO commanders from SACEUR down need to grip quickly. Experience of the past twelve years of operations
has severely undermined the credibility of European multinational formations in
general and the corps concept in particular. Multinational formations have been
disaggregated to support nationally-led provincial reconstruction teams in
Afghanistan, been broken up to support US headquarters, or remained by and large political fantasy (EU
Battlegroups).

Therefore, for Allied Land Command
or indeed any other NATO command to generate all-important reform momentum the
very case of such formations needs to be remade to political leaders – in terms
of effectiveness AND efficiency.

My sense of the
conference was of good people grappling with big issues and trying to back
engineer grand strategic solutions via the military-strategic backdoor.They will only get so far.What they need is clear
political guidance allied to a renewed requisite level of ambition that properly
prepares NATO forces for the undoubted challenges ahead.Surely that is one lesson of President Putin’s
adventurism – if that is our politicians have the courage to see that.

Monday, 3 March 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 3 March.Article 30 of the May 2009 Russian National Security Strategy states, “Negative
influences on the military security of the Russian Federation and its allies
are aggravated by the departure from international agreements pertaining to
arms limitation and reduction, and likewise by actions intended to disrupt the
stability of systems of government and military administration…”The Russian invasion this past weekend is blatant
flouting of international law.It is
also a long-planned intervention that has been sitting in the files of the
Russian Defence Ministry since at least 1991.The grand strategic reason for the intervention is the determination of
Moscow to reassert control over what it sees as Russia’s “near abroad” with
Ukraine as its lynchpin.However, there are
five additional reasons why Moscow has seized the collapse of the Yanukovich
regime as the moment to intervene – history, military strategy, military capability,
politics and opportunity.

History:Ukraine has always had a strong pull on the
Russian mind as it is the spiritual home of the Russian Orthodox Church.In 1954 Ukrainian-born Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
handed ‘control’ of the Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.As Ukraine was then firmly under Moscow’s
control the transfer mattered little, although it did mean the de facto shift
of ethnic Russians and Tartars under the nominal administrative fiat of
Kiev.On Ukraine’s independence from the
Soviet Union in 1991 the transfer became a matter of both historical and
strategic import to Moscow.‘Loss’ of
Ukraine to the EU (and eventually NATO) would be the final humiliation to the
Kremlin following two decades of perceived retreat since the end of the Cold
War in 1989.

Military
Strategy:One of Russia’s
long held strategic mantras has been the need to maintain a warm water naval
base that could enable Russian influence in the Mediterranean and the Middle
East.Sevastopol has long provided just
such a facility for the Black Seas Fleet, which is in fact the Russian
Mediterranean Fleet.The nature of the
Russian military operation this weekend and the use of Special Forces to
establish a bridgehead at Simferopol and Sevastopol Airports are
indicative.They point to a classic Russian
expeditionary operation that creates and exploits local unrest to enable
seizure of the seat of government as well as control of land, sea and air space.The initial aim is to secure the Sevastopol base
and its lines of supply and re-supply with Russia.

Military
Capability: In 2010 Russia announced it would
inject $775 billion into the professionalization and modernization of its armed
forces.This followed the disappointing
performance of Russian forces in 2008 during Moscow’s seizure of parts of
Georgia. The bulk of those new forces are established in the Central and
Western Military Districts which abut the Ukrainian border.The kit being worn by the deployed force demonstrates
a mix of Special Forces (Spetsnaz) and specialised forces and reflects the
effort Moscow has made to improve deployability of its elite professional
forces.

Ukrainian forces have
enjoyed no such modernization.In any
case the upper echelons of the Ukrainian military’s command chain are deeply
split, as evinced by the defection this weekend by the Head of the Ukrainian
Navy.Many senior Ukrainian officers owe
their appointment to Yanukovich.

Politics:The Putin regime was established in 2000 and led
to the cult of Putinism.It is a regime
that consolidates domestic power by appealing to nostalgic Russian notions of
grandeur.In particular the regime has
endeavoured to recreate the sense of a Russia powerful enough to re-capture the
influence Moscow enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s at the height of the Soviet
Union’s super-power.The 2014 Sochi
Olympics were very much part of the regime’s image-building.In 2013 US Secretary of State John Kerry gave
equal billing to Russia in the handling of the Syria crisis and enhanced the
reputation of the regime at home.

Opportunity:The Kremlin under Putin is first and foremost
a strategic opportunist.The withdrawal
of two US Brigade Combat Teams from Europe may seem small in and of
itself.However, taken together with the
‘pivot’ to Asia and President Obama’s uncertain grip of grand strategy the US
is no longer the stabilising force in Europe it once was.The Kremlin also has contempt for ideas of ‘civil
power’ built around Germany and the EU.Moreover, Russia’s military renaissance has taken place in parallel with
the West’s failures in both Afghanistan and Iraq.The Kremlin is also acutely conscious of
Europe’s economic travails and de facto disarmament with total defence spending
in Europe down by minus 1.8% per annum since 2001. Moreover, the refusal of all but two NATO
European states to meet their obligation to spend 2% of GDP on defence has also
led Moscow to conclude that Europeans lack the will and capability to block
Moscow’s regional-strategic ambitions.

Implications
for Russia and Ukraine:The seizure of parts of Ukraine will in the short-term strengthen the
grip of Putin over Russia.However,
Russia faces deep demographic and economic challenges which unless addressed
will see Russia continue to fade as the West, China and others eclipse Moscow.

The east of Ukraine is
very vulnerable.Moscow has a cynical
view of the use of power and will almost certainly use the concerns of ethnic
Russians to justify an intervention that would straighten Russia’s strategic
borders and thus consolidate the new Russian sphere of influence.

Recommendations:
There is no quick fix available to Western policymakers.However, Western allies must use all the
non-military tools at their disposal to force the Kremlin to reconsider the
costs versus the benefits of such action.That will include use of international fora to build a countervailing
coalition, possibly with China which dislikes sovereignty grabs.All economic tools must be applied with
sanctions imposed on key officials, with Aeroflot flights to Europe and North
America suspended and Gazprom slowly removed from the European market.The accounts of senior Russians outside of
the the country must be frozen.Finally,
the US must re-position forces back in Europe, including the Baltic States and
Europeans must commit to the re-building of their armed forces.

Conclusions:Over the medium-to-long term NATO allies
must re-establish credible defence as part of a balanced economic, diplomatic
and military influence effort in and around Europe. Former US President Bill Clinton and former US
Ambassador to NATO Nick Burns said yesterday said that the enlargement of NATO
to former members of the Soviet Bloc guaranteed their security.This is correct to a point. Without the
modernisation of Article 5 collective defence the value of NATO membership will
over time erode and if Putin remains in power the Kremlin will exploit such
weakness.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.